"Crimes, piracy, and an unwilling time traveller"
Reviewed by Clare O'Beara
Posted November 13, 2024
Romance Historical | Romance Time Travel
Caroline Reed lived on a fine working plantation in South Carolina in 1727. But she has a double life. Her nights of sound sleep turn into days with another family in 1927’s St. Paul, Minnesota. The young woman’s wit and character are about to be tested ACROSS THE AGES.
I had not read any earlier books in the Timeless series by Gabrielle Meyer, and this is a perfect jumping-in point for new readers. Caroline does not know what is happening to her, nor why she is Caroline Baldwin, a prosperous preacher’s daughter, half the time. Her twentieth-century family scolded what seemed like an over-imaginative child, and her eighteenth-century parents feared superstition and scandal. She can’t tell anyone and be believed.
While the author has researched many persons of both days for fleshing out characters, the earlier time has the most appeal for me. Leaving her restrictive home on the threat of forced marriage, Caroline pretends to be a ship’s cabin boy. Just bad luck that the ship she chooses is overtaken by one of the last remaining pirates. Obliged to serve the officers as they head to Nassau, Bahamas, Caroline keeps her head down and hopes to survive.
Meanwhile, in the days of Prohibition, Caroline was searching for her mother in that time, a woman who had a baby young and left the family for the open road. Maybe her mother can answer some questions. Maybe she crosses time too. The list of side characters swells to include Charles Lindbergh and Ernest Hemingway, but the Baldwin family dynamics are complicated, much like the extraordinary approach to law enforcement at St. Paul’s.
At first, I did not see the point of the dual-time story, except to contrast the freedoms of women; as the tale neared the end some matters are explained to the traveller, and her waking and sleeping lives become pertinent indeed. Like all of us, Caroline has choices to make. The heroines of earlier books in the series must also have made choices, and I would be interested to read about their lives and decisions. For now, the only way to time travel is within a book or movie, or by visiting a recreated historic town. ACROSS THE AGES has whetted my appetite with a clean romance story. Gabrielle Meyer is a talented historical romance writer in two times and with a variety of crimes and misdemeanours for interest.
SUMMARY
Caroline holds a deep secret. Existing in 1727 and 1927 simultaneously, each night she goes to sleep in one life and wakes up in the other. Searching for answers to her unique existence, Caroline stumbles upon a letter from her mother that hints at her own experiences as a time-crosser, sending Caroline on a quest to uncover the truth. In 1727, chasing the mysteries of her mother's past, Caroline disguises herself as a cabin boy and joins a ship sailing for the Bahamas, her mother's last known location. Amid treacherous waters, she crosses paths with Marcus Zale, a ruthless but handsome pirate, and finds herself caught in a web of secrets, deception, and unexpected alliances.
Meanwhile, in 1927 St. Paul, Minnesota, Caroline grapples with her other life as the daughter of a renowned preacher. Her two older brothers have strayed from their upbringing into the corruption rampant during Prohibition, and Caroline struggles to protect her parents from the truth that could shatter her father's career. As her search for answers about her time-crossing leads her to the dangerous speakeasies of St. Paul, Caroline enlists the help of police officer Lewis Cager, a childhood friend. But when her family's future is put at risk and loyalties are tested, Caroline is faced with a life-altering decision that could reshape her destiny.
ExcerptMay 21, 1727
Middleburg Plantation
Huger, South Carolina
My bare toes dug into the hardpacked earth as I beat the rug on the back line, watching the dust melt away into the setting sunlight. It moved through the drooping Spanish moss on the ancient oak trees overhead, making me long for my troubles to fade away so easily. My arms burned from my task, and yet the anxious thoughts did not disappear, nor did the work calm my fearful heart.
No matter how hard I tried to forget, the reality of my life was still with me—or rather, the reality of my lives. I didn’t know what to call my existence or why it happened to me. When I went to sleep tonight in South Carolina in 1727, I would wake up in Paris, France, in 1927 tomorrow. And when I went to sleep in Paris, I would wake up in South Carolina again the next day—with no time passing while I was gone. I had two identical bodies, but one conscious mind that moved between them. And I had been going back and forth since I could remember. Perhaps from the very beginning of my strange life.
My breath came hard as sweat beaded on my brow.
If only I could release the secrets my heart kept hidden, just as
I released the months of dust and dirt from the rugs. Everything about my life was one secret built upon another. A fortress of mysteries too high to breach.
Some were the secrets I kept, and others were the secrets kept from me.
“Caroline!” Grandfather’s stern voice drifted through the oak trees and magnolias on our small tobacco plantation. The Cooper River sparkled in the distance, but the fields of ripening tobacco, and the indentured servants who worked there, were hidden from my view.
“I’m here,” I called to Grandfather, just around the corner and out of sight from the back porch of our simple two-story plantation home. I lifted the apron from the front of my homespun gown and wiped my brow as I made my way over roots and rocks toward him.
Grandfather stood on the porch of our white clapboard house, his arms crossed in disapproval as he waited for me. Middleburg Plantation was a prominent property, and my grandfather, Josias Reed, was well respected. He’d come from England, by way of Massachusetts, to South Carolina. He was pleased with the home he had built, but the future of his pride and joy was uncertain, as I was his only heir.
“What have you been doing?” he asked as I slowed my steps.
“Beating the rugs.”
His gaze fell to my bare feet and then lifted to the dust covering my face as his disapproval deepened. “We have servants to do the menial tasks, Caroline. The mistress of the plantation should be tending to the indoor work.”
“I like beat—”
“Our guests have arrived,” he interrupted. “You should have been prepared by now. Governor Shepherd is an important man, and he will not look kindly upon his oldest son marrying a hoyden.”
“His son?” I frowned, confused. “I am not marrying the governor’s son.”
“What do you think this meeting is for?” he asked, his frustration mounting. “Really, Caroline. Your naiveté will be your undoing.”
“I’ve heard he’s old and lazy,” I protested.
Grandfather took a step forward and lowered his voice, no doubt worried that the governor and his son might hear. “Elijah Shepherd will inherit five thousand acres of the best rice plantation in America one day.” He shook his head with disappointment. “I could make nothing of your fickle mother before she ran off with that worthless sea merchant. But I will make something of you.”
I had heard this threat my whole life. My mother, Anne Reed, had been a hoyden, as well. A motherless child with a penchant for recklessness and rebellion. She’d run off with the first man who had shown interest in her.
She’d only been thirteen.
A year later, she’d left me on my grandfather’s doorstep. Her recklessness had led to Grandfather’s poor opinion of me, so I vowed to never be wild and thoughtless like her. I was twenty years old—seven years older than her when she ran off—and I had done nothing to earn his poor regard. Yet, he let me know I could still turn out like her if I didn’t follow his plan for my life.
“I do not want to marry Elijah Shepherd,” I said, trying to appeal to his compassion, though I’d not witnessed it often. “I do not love him.”
“Love.” He said the word with such disdain it made me wonder if he’d ever been in love. He’d never spoken of my grandmother and rarely spoke of my mother, unless he was comparing my inadequacies to hers. The only things I knew were the rumors I’d overheard the servants whispering.
Witchcraft. Adultery. Abandonment. Betrayal.
“If I can secure a marriage between you and Elijah,” he said, “and we can join our plantations, we will be the richest planters in South Carolina. I will not have you thwart my plans.” He opened the back door. “Come. Nanny will help you dress for supper.”
I had no choice but to slip up the back stairs to my room. The house was long and narrow, with three rooms on the main floor and three above. Grandfather slept in one room on the far end of the upstairs, and I had the middle room. The room on the opposite end had belonged to my mother but had been locked my whole life. I walked by the closed door now, a reminder of all the secrets kept from me. Twice, I’d tried to break into that room to see what Grandfather was hiding, but both times I had been discovered and thoroughly disciplined with the rod.
Nanny was waiting for me when I entered my room, my best muslin gown in her arthritic hands. She had been with me my whole life, coming to Middleburg when my mother was an infant. She’d been old when I was young and was almost too old to be of service now. But I would not hear of her being displaced. She was one of the only connections I had to my mother, though she told me little more than Grandfather.
“Off gadding about again?” she asked, tsking me with a smile in her voice. “Your grandfather is in a state. We must hurry.” She began to untie the lacings at my back.
“I was not gadding about,” I told her as I slipped out of my gown. “Did you know the purpose for Governor Shepherd’s visit today?”
“Aye— and I suspect you did, too.”
“Grandfather has told me nothing before now.”
“Are you that naïve, Caroline?” she asked. “Surely, you knew that he would marry you to his advantage.” She turned me to look at my image in the mirror as she helped me into my muslin gown.
“Look at how pretty you are. ’Tis a wonder someone didn’t scoop you up before now.”
My brown eyes stared back at me from a face that some called beautiful, though I saw all the flaws. A square jaw, thick eyebrows, a petulant mouth, and a rebellious gaze— one I tried to quell.
I shared some similarities with my parents in 1927, but neither of them had brown eyes. Did Anne, my mother in 1727, have brown eyes? Or were they the eyes of her sea merchant husband?
The man with a name I’d never been told.
Nanny helped me restyle my hair as I used a wet cloth to wipe the sweat and dust from my face. When I was young, I tried telling her about my other life, but she had shushed me, threatening to whip me for speaking such blasphemy and lies. She had put her trembling hand against my lips and said, “Speak not such things. You’re already marked by your ancestors.” She had moved her hand to my chest where I bore a sunburst birthmark, the same one she said my mother had possessed, and perhaps my grandmother before her. “Do not give them a reason to destroy you as they did them.”
Her words had further terrified a frightened child. For years, I had lived in fear and uncertainty, wondering if I was insane. Perhaps my two lives were a work of my imagination. But, if so, which one was real, and which was made up?
I wanted to ask Nanny who had destroyed my ancestors, but my questions would go unanswered, so I heeded her words and spoke no more about the second life I lived as the fortress of secrets grew around me, holding me captive. Over the years, I had come to accept that somehow both of my lives were real, and there had to be an explanation— one that was being kept from me.
One that perhaps my mother could answer.
Moments later, as I walked down the stairs and into the central room of our home, I felt all eyes upon me.
My gaze met Elijah Shepherd’s, and my heart filled with dread. He looked me up and down, assessing me with a coolness that was all business. He did not smile or offer any warm welcome but analyzed me as if he were purchasing livestock or seed.
“Caroline,” Grandfather said as he lifted a hand to beckon me. “May I present Governor Shepherd and his son, Mister Elijah Shepherd?”
I curtsied as I’d been taught, and the men bowed.
“How do you do?” I asked them, trying to hide the revulsion from my face and voice.
Elijah was at least ten years my senior, and he did not bear the look of a man who worked his own land. He was thick about the middle, and his skin was pale, telling me he spent his days indoors.
There was no depth to his gaze, no sign of intelligence or character. More than anything, I longed for a man with fire in his eyes.
“’Tis a pleasure to finally meet you, Miss Reed,” Governor Shepherd said. “We’ve been working through the details of the betrothal, but I believe we’ve finally arrived at an agreement.” “Indeed we have,” Grandfather said with a smile. I could think of no greater prison or worse fate.
I left the men to their cigars and brandy the moment I could be excused. It had been an unbearable supper as Elijah stared at me. Grandfather and Governor Shepherd spoke of farming and politics, though neither man included Elijah in the discussion. The longer I sat in his presence, the more I worried Elijah was simpleminded. Was he even capable of inheriting such a large plantation?
Or taking a wife?
I didn’t want to find out.
My pulse thrummed as I left the room, needing to be free of the confines of my life and the expectations placed upon me. I shivered just thinking about Elijah Shepherd touching me or living with him day after day.
I wanted so much more from this life. Freedom, the opportunity to make my own decisions, and most of all, I wanted to know my mother.
But paramount to all of that was the need to know why I lived two lives.
I felt breathless as I raced up the stairs to my bedchamber, an oil lamp in hand. Tomorrow I would be in 1927 and could have a reprieve from this life— yet I would wake up here the next day, and it would be waiting for me.
I thought of my mother and wondered if Grandfather had tried to force her into a loveless marriage. Was that why she had fled South Carolina at such a tender age?
There had to be an answer—a way out of this nightmare.
I stopped at her bedchamber door, curious to know what Grandfather was hiding from me. Perhaps my mother was still alive and the answer to all the secrets was behind this door.
I didn’t think twice but went into Grandfather’s bedchamber in search of the keys. My heart pounded so hard, I could hear the beating in my ears.
Finally, I found a key ring and then quickly replaced everything I had dislodged in my search. I returned to my mother’s bedchamber door, and with shaking hands, I slipped several keys into the lock until I found the right one.
When it clicked, time felt like it stopped.
Tossing a glance over my shoulder, I slowly turned the knob and then slipped into the dark room, closing the door behind me.
My breath was shallow as I looked around, holding my lamp high. The room was nondescript. A four-poster bed, a bureau, a washstand. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting— but nothing so normal or . . . simple.
Perhaps Grandfather wasn’t hiding something.
Disappointment weighed down on me. I had hoped this room would reveal the answers to my questions, but there was nothing. I opened each of the drawers and looked under the bed, but it was all empty. Nothing remained of my mother.
My legs felt heavy, so I walked across the room and sat on the bed, holding the lamp in my hands. I wanted to cry, but I had learned at an early age that it didn’t make anything better. I wanted to pray, but I wasn’t sure that God would listen. Did He hear the pleas of a marked woman?
The lamp cast a shadow over the wall, and I noticed a slight variation in the wainscoting. Frowning, I set the lamp on the nightstand and moved across the room. When I reached the wall, I ran my hand over the boards and felt a piece shift.
Slowly, I removed the panel and sucked in a breath.
There was a hole behind the wall, and within it was an envelope.
With trembling hands, I lifted the envelope and brought it back
to the bed. Sitting next to the lamp, I opened the envelope and pulled out the thin paper within.
My mouth slipped open as I skimmed the page.
It had been written by my mother, and she had dated it December 1706—three months after I was born and about the time I had been brought to my grandfather.
I leaned closer to the lamp to see the words my mother had penned twenty years ago.
I suspect you will hate me, Caroline. As much as I hated my mother for abandoning me and leaving me in the care of my father, Josias Reed. He tells me she died in Salem in 1692 but refuses to tell me how or why. There can only be one reason a woman of her age died there that year and it is kept a secret. She was a witch. Did she curse me? Is that why I must suffer through two lives, because she hated the child she bore?
My pulse thrummed in my wrists. My mother also had two lives! I continued to read, filled with both panic and exhilaration to know I wasn’t the only one.
I hate myself for leaving you with my father, but the difficult life you’ll lead with him will offer you more advantages than the difficult one I’ve chosen for myself. You might wonder why I don’t abandon my life in Nassau, but that is the trouble with love, isn’t it? We give up anything that makes sense to be near the one who makes us feel the most alive. That is what your father does for me. That is why I am returning to him. I left before my pregnancy was obvious and will never tell him of your birth. You would not be safe if he knew you existed.
I write this to you now because I wish my mother had left me something. A morsel, a grain, even a speck of correspondence. But, mayhap this will only make you angry when you read it one day. If you read it one day. I wish I could explain why I’ve left you—why I left South Carolina in the first place—b ut it will only hurt you more. I’ve never told anyone the truth about my lives, and I wouldn’t expect you to understand it, either. I shall carry the secret to my grave, though that inevitable day feels closer and closer. I might only be fourteen in this life, but I’ve lived for twenty eight years. Mayhap when you read this, I will no longer be alive. But that might be best for you and anyone else who knows me.
The letter ended on that final, fatalistic note.
My mind spun with all the implications. My mother had two lives, just like me. She’d brought me to South Carolina to protect me from my father. Would he have harmed me if he knew she was pregnant? And who was my father? Grandfather said the sea merchant my mother ran off with was a cowardly, weak man. Surely, he wouldn’t have wanted to harm his own daughter. More importantly, she said she was returning to Nassau. The only thing I knew about Nassau, Bahamas, was that it was the Republic of Pirates until nine or ten years ago—a nd it still had a reputation for depravity and crime. Pirate leaders like Benjamin Hornigold, Blackbeard, and Charles Vane had either been pardoned by the king or killed, but there were still some pirates who plied the Caribbean.
I looked away from the letter, the possibilities endless. My mother could have been associated with the pirates. But was she still living in Nassau? I desperately wanted to understand what was happening to me, and she was the only person who might have the answers.
I heard a footstep on the stairs and quickly blew out my lamp. It was Grandfather’s tread, slow, heavy, deliberate.
His footsteps didn’t even pause or hesitate by Mother’s room, and a few seconds later, I heard his door open and close.
I let out the breath I was holding and slipped the letter back into the wall before closing the panel. After waiting a few moments, I left Mother’s bedchamber and locked the door.
Nanny would be asleep above the kitchen, and the house would be settled for the night. I would need to work fast if I was going to get away without notice.
Nothing would stop me from finding my mother.
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